Any Port in a Storm
by element78
Summary: A demonic attack leaves Castiel injured and weak and in need of a temporary new vessel while he recovers. Fortunately, Jimmy Novak has a distant cousin in California who fits the bill. Unfortunately, said cousin is a werewolf.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Little bit of Jedi hand-waving here, relevant mostly to the timelines, which very much do not sync up. Just roll with it. Also, as I found the whole Scott-Allison 'epic true love' crap to be gag-inducing and the show's biggest weakness, I wholeheartedly support the breakup. There will not be a lot of Allison in this fic, if any at all, because Derek is the main focus and naturally she's not gonna be hanging around him.

Warnings- Nothing, really. No overt slash pairings but some subtle indications, though nothing more serious than either show likes to shove in your face. Show-level gore. Set after season two for Teen Wolf, and during season five for Supernatural, after episode 5.16, Dark Side of the Moon, so the whole Apocalypse thing is still happening but Cas is no longer bothering with his God hunt.

* * *

It's only a nightmare. Derek knows this because he's had it before; it's a regular feature on those nights he lets himself sleep long enough for nightmares to kick in. It's _only a nightmare_, it can't hurt him, yet as he smells the smoke and turns to see dancing red light shading the hallway beyond the open door, he knows he'll wake to rough half-moon scars in his palms where his claws are no doubt already digging in.

He hadn't been there for the fire. He and Laura had been at school when the fire began- another 'gift' from Kate, perhaps, the guarantee that Derek would survive, burdened with the knowledge of his unintended treachery. But Derek's imagination is more than up to the challenge, and he stands in his old house as the fire roars and listens to his family scream and smells cooking meat and feels the old helpless rage well up.

He lunges forward- he's not fast enough, not strong enough, but he's got to try- only to jerk back immediately, already at the limits of the chain wrapped choke-chain style around his neck. He fights it, of course, but in this world he's sixteen again, a good six inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than he will be when he wakes up.

Kate laughs at him as his family burns and he snarls at her. She's not worried. Her throat is bloody and torn where Peter had ripped through it and Derek hates, absolutely _hates_, that some tiny part of him still mourns her.

The chain gives abruptly and Derek stumbles, staggers forward. Kate laughs again as she trots out into the hallway and he barrels after her, growls in his throat and blood on his mind-

-and plows right into the stranger.

The world flickers for a moment, then all goes still. He's still in the house but it's empty and quiet now, no smoke or fire, no Kate laughing or screams downstairs, no furniture or wallpaper. It's white walls and wood floors and an eerie quiet.

Derek rocks back, blinking and bewildered. It had been like hitting a brick wall, running into this guy. Like when he'd been a kid trying to tackle his Alpha father while playing. The man looks- not to put too fine a point on it- like a mangled piece of roadkill, all blood and ash, clothes torn and stained, skin pale and hands trembling. For all that, his eyes are startlingly blue, the brightest blue Derek has ever seen, pain and fever-brightness bringing out their color that much more. They burn with resolve, as if the only thing keeping him from faceplanting into the floorboards is pure willpower.

"Are you Derek Hale?" he asks, and, really? What the hell? This is not how this dream is supposed to go. He's getting very confused now, and the patented Derek Hale response to confusion is to attack something. There's nothing to attack, though, just an empty house and a guy who already looks like he's gone ten rounds with a pissed-off grizzly bear.

"Are you Derek Hale?" the man asks again, the words ground out through tight-grit teeth. Derek looks back at him, curious now. He's heard of people incorporating someone into their dreams, a stranger they passed on the street, a model in a billboard advertisement- something small, but enough to imprint the face onto the subconscious. It doesn't seem like something that simple, though. If nothing else, he's fairly sure he'd remember those eyes.

"Yeah," he says finally. "Who are you?" Because as genuinely weird as this all is, it's just a dream. It can't hurt him.

"I am Castiel," the stranger says. He hesitates between syllables when he introduces himself, the 'Cas' flowing out smoothly and the 'tiel' stumbling on a pause. He sways for a moment, face going grey under the blood splatter and eyes going glassy, and Derek takes a mindless step forward as if to catch him.

"I need your help," Castiel says, once the dizziness has passed and he looks as steady on his feet as he's ever been.

"You need a hospital," Derek corrects. Or a mercy killing, he wants to add, but keeps that to himself.

"I need you to let me in," the man continues, as if Derek hasn't spoken. Derek suddenly realizes he's still within arm's reach of the guy and takes a step back, then another. It's been a long time since his instincts sounded full retreat- ever since he became Alpha, he's been the toughest thing in the neighborhood, or near enough. He can't even begin to guess why this guy reads dangerous to him.

"Let you in where?" he asks, although he has a feeling he already knows. The man looks at him, and as Derek watches, something changes. A pinprick of light appears in the man's pupils and expands until his eyes are glowing like penlights, and pale light flashes under his skin. He gasps, harsh and short, and his back arches and his knees buckle and he chokes off a cry of pain that twists in Derek's gut like he's the one hurting. The man gasps again and retches and Derek smells sulfur and rot and backs off a little bit more. Whatever's going on, he wants nothing to do with any of it.

Once the attack, or whatever that was, is over, Castiel slowly sits up, head rolling back like his neck has gone boneless. He regards Derek with an unfocused, heavy-lidded gaze. The light is gone from his eyes but still shines under his skin, shifting and sliding, there and gone again like moonlight reflecting on choppy water. Derek catalogues all this distantly. He's far too busy staring at the wings.

They've been there the whole time, he knows that now. He'd thought they were a trick of the eye, at first, solid as a heat-haze behind the man, looking so much like spun glass. He still can't see them all that well, except when the attack had hit, the light flashing along Castiel's skin had also spasmed over his wings, highlighting and outlining them.

"You…" Derek begins, but can't seem to find the words to finish that.

"I need permission," the- the- Derek's mind stubbornly rebels at the word _angel_- says, wrapping his arms around himself.

Derek isn't the religious sort. All he knows about angels is the Sunday school basics, and at a guess, if they're real, what little he does know is so wrong as to be useless. But he doesn't need to be religious, or even spiritual, to believe- to hope- in something…. Well, just _something._

It's just a dream. It isn't real.

"All right," he says, and it isn't Derek Hale, Alpha wolf and general badass that says that, but Derek Hale, sixteen-year-old beta wolf and decent guy. The Derek that nothing bad has happened to yet, the Derek that can still, in some small way, believe in angels.

The angel smiles.

* * *

Derek jerks awake to the sound of thunder.

Lightning flashes, splashing the room with brilliant white light, and Derek bites out a curse and rolls over, tucking his face into the pillow to hide his night-adjusted eyes. The thunder rolls on, getting louder, like a freight train barreling right towards the house. Derek jerks the pillow out of his face and brings it down over his head, trying to cut off the noise.

For one long moment everything goes kind of blurry, and Derek feels like he's freefalling, like the world has disappeared from under him and he's plummeting into space-

"Derek!"

-and just like that it's over.

He rolls over and tries to continue the motion until he's on his feet but the world swings wildly under him. He staggers backwards, hits the wall and sits back down. Peter comes charging in, wild-eyed and barefoot- but wearing jeans and a t-shirt, sleep-rumpled and bunched up to show an inch or two of stomach, since they all know better than to go to bed naked- and slides to a stop beside the pile of blankets Derek considers a bed. Derek growls on instinct, because as much as Peter claims he has no interest in regaining his Alpha status, Derek has no interest in trusting the self-professed psychopath.

Also, Peter is glowing. And not necessarily in a good way.

Peter holds out a hand as if to say _wait_, eyes searching the room. After a long moment he looks down at his nephew.

"What was that?" he asks. Derek blinks at him. There's something dark and twisted in and under and around Peter, crispy-burnt and radiating a dull, honey-gold glow through the cracks. Whatever the hell it is, it looks about as healthy as Derek imagines Peter himself is.

"You mean the storm?" Derek counters, tone almost but not quite condescension-free. He knows there's going to be some side effects from Peter's, well, everything. He hadn't known regression to grade-school fears would be part of the package.

Peter gives him a droll look, and _there's_ the almost-sane uncle Derek has gotten to re-know over the past few weeks. "Odd storm," he says, visibly gathering himself. "It was coming from in here."

Derek shrugs and gestures broadly around him, indicating the complete normality of everything. Peter looks around again, as if he expects to find something hidden in a room lacking even basic furniture, unless the duffel bag holding Derek's laundry counted. After a moment he makes a noise like _huh_ and turns, shaking his head. He stops in the doorway, sparing one last measuring look at Derek- less like a search for any sign of weakness, and more like reassuring himself of Derek's well-being, and Derek still doesn't know what to do with it when he does things like that- before he shuffles out into the hallway and back downstairs.

The blackish thing woven into him goes with him, although Derek can almost smell the lingering scent of charred flesh.

Derek lets himself drop face-up onto his nest of blankets, eyes on the ceiling, and tries to figure out if it's worth the effort of getting up. After a few moments he decides this latest weirdness can wait until morning and rolls onto his side and goes back to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Ugh, tired. No chatter tonight.

As a side note, I will attempt to update faster. This chapter was refusing to cooperate, is all.

* * *

Derek doesn't tell anyone about the angel.

He only half-believes it himself, really, and even then it takes almost a week before he's accepted that that _actually happened_. There's no big, obvious, noticeable difference, only a bunch of little things that would be easy enough to overlook on their own. The darkness in Peter he'd seen that night is gone by the next morning, and if he sometimes catches a glimpse of an echo of a sunshine-colored glow in the others, it's gone by the time he looks directly at them. He thinks there's something different in his own head, some walled-off part that hides something cool and alien and massive- he gets the impression of power, the one time he pushes, something incredibly powerful coiled and folded and tucked in tight on itself- but trying to feel it out is like staring cross-eyed at something on the end of his nose, awkward and uncomfortable, so he leaves it alone. He's tired, more so than he has been since his last god-awful growth spurt, and in a constant, hazy, second-hand sort of pain, and no amount of rest seems to be doing him any good.

The biggest thing is he doesn't dream anymore. He sleeps almost twice as much now as he did before, but he sleeps nightmare-free. Anytime a nightmare starts, it seems to derail, like someone pushed the 'abort' button. He thinks, if he goes looking in those almost-nightmares, he might find the blue-eyed man. He never bothers.

The first morning after, Derek goes downstairs to find Peter sitting at the kitchen table with the laptop with the Hale family records sitting open in front of him. His arms are folded on the table and his chin is resting on his wrist and his eyes are closed. Derek looks over his shoulder at the laptop screen. The laptop is in sleep mode.

"You do realize it's almost one in the afternoon?" Peter says, not bothering to open his eyes. Derek looks at the grainy, cold, slightly scummy coffee in the cup at Peter's elbow. He goes over to the counter and pours out the cold coffee in the pot and sets the coffeemaker to brewing a new batch. He leans against the counter while he waits, fighting down a yawn. He's never had an injury or illness that lasted long enough to need the human style of healing, with the bedrest and all that, and doesn't like this new experience. He feels weak and lightheaded and a bit hazy.

"Did you find anything?" he asks instead of answering. Peter finally moves, picking his head up and rubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand. He taps a key to wake the laptop up and sits back in his chair, pinning his nephew with a long, studying stare.

He has nothing on the angel, Derek can't help but think.

"Depends," he says. "Is there something you aren't telling me?"

Derek rests his hands on the counter on either side of him and crosses his legs at the ankle, staring right back.

"Or don't tell me," Peter mutters as he switches his gaze to the laptop. "I like guessing games."

Then he unthinkingly takes a sip of his scummy coffee, and his grumbling and low-key insubordination is worth it just to watch his spit-take.

* * *

Derek won't let the kids sleep here in the new house, not with Peter around- a strong, healthy, functional Alpha is vital to Peter's wellbeing at the moment, so Derek is safe, but the other betas are disposable. Derek isn't willing to gamble their lives on Peter's tolerance of their presence. To them, this means they're allowed to spend every spare second of the day here so long as they graciously allow Derek about five hours' sleep every night.

They'd have to be stupid not to notice the difference, of course, but when Peter- in full tattletale mode- mentions Derek's oversleeping thing that afternoon, they have about forty-five seconds to treat it with the appropriate concern before Erica mentions a girl who got mono last year. And just like that, any potential threat of serious conversation is derailed, while Derek reassures the three kids that he doesn't have mono, most likely can't get mono, and- as a distraction- admits that he has never had so much as a cold. The three kids shun him after that, huddled together to share stories and commiserate, and as a born werewolf Derek is firmly on the outs in that little circle.

Peter gives him a disgruntled look, like he can't remember ever being that young and is positive the children of his generation were better-behaved, and all Derek can do is shrug. When he was their age, his family had just been murdered and his whole world uprooted, so he really can't do a fair comparison.

* * *

The third time the house fire nightmare begins, and then abruptly ends, Derek goes looking for the angel.

It's a dream, of course, so things are a little slippery-he has to backtrack twice, once when he wanders into the burnt shell of the house that is all that is currently standing, once when he hears Kate's laugh and decides it's not worth finding out if it's possible to somehow wander back into the nightmare- but he finally finds the angel in the main hallway, back to the wall and legs tucked in close, wings wrapped tight around in him the perfect picture of abject misery.

"You're really an angel?" Derek asks, sitting down against the wall opposite him- close enough not to be rude, but far enough away in case of… well, anything. Not that he really stands a chance against something that can troll his _dreams_.

Castiel takes a moment longer to answer that than is reassuring, but finally he unfolds his wings and sweeps them back. It's a grand, slow movement, like the curtain pulling back on a stage. Derek notices the wings seem more solid now than the last time he'd seen them- like a faint mist, still barely there, but a far sight better than the heat-haze they'd been last time.

"What else would I be?" Castiel counters, turning his blue gaze on Derek.

Derek didn't really have a good answer to that, but then, until he'd seen the lizard-man for himself, he hadn't imagined anything like a kanima either. Simply because he can't think of anything other than _angel _doesn't mean there are no other possibilities out there.

"What's wrong with you anyway?" he asks, since he's not going to answer a question if the angel won't.

"I was attacked by demons," Castiel says, his wings drawing in tight and hunching up close. The rest of him doesn't react, not so much as a twitch, and Derek thinks the guy would be as easy to read as a plank of wood if it weren't for those wings. "They attempted to perform a ritual on me to- corrupt me." The long pause before 'corrupt' makes Derek wonder what wasn't being said. Something he doesn't really want to know about, probably- just picturing a 'corrupted' angel is bad enough. "The ritual was interrupted before they could complete it, but my vessel- sustained damage." Again with the pause. Derek's only being told half a story here, and if he wants the other half, he won't be getting it from Castiel.

"Is that what I am now? Your vessel?" he asks, folding his arms over his chest. The wings loosen a little, back to framing the angel.

"Yes," Castiel says. "I did not think a werewolf would be suitable, but my vessel could not contain me for much longer, and I had nowhere else to go."

The last is said as calmly as the rest, which means the raw pain and wistfulness Derek feels is from the angel itself. It's the first thing to make it through the wall the angel built itself deep within his mind.

"Couldn't pick anyone else? Had to be me?" Derek asks wryly. In his experience, getting singled out in such a way is never a good thing.

"Only certain people can contain an angel within themselves," Castiel says, sliding easily into lecture mode. "It runs along the bloodline. You and my former vessel, James Novak, are cousins. You share an ancestor through whom the proper gene can be traced."

It's not a surprise, really- Derek's heard of things like that, of people who look exactly like a great-great-grandparent fifty years dead. It's not really a shocker that he shares the angel gene with Joe Blow Average through some distant familial offshoot the Hale line probably lost track of a long time ago. It's harder to accept that he's the only person in the world who meets the necessary requirements, especially considering the angel gene managed to survive through such a thin blood link.

Still, now doesn't seem to be a good time to be challenging the angel on this. Instead he latches onto another word in the angel's last sentence.

"Former vessel," he echoes. "Are you- this isn't permanent, is it?" He wants very much to make it an order- this _is not_ permanent, he is definitely getting his privacy back at some point, and no doubt the angel will want some time behind the wheel once he recovers from the demon whatever, and Derek is not timesharing his body with an angel. Just… _no_.

Castiel's wings draw in, back and tight, and there's even a facial reaction, surprise flickering over those otherwise stony eyes.

"No," he says. "My vessel will recover and I will return to it. Until then, I must remain here."

"Him," Derek corrects after a long moment. Castiel looks at him, brows furrowing in question, and Derek says through a throat that wants to tighten in inexplicable anger, "Your vessel, that guy, is him, not an it."

The sadness comes from within, again, this time tinged with guilt. "Of course," he murmurs, but he's humoring Derek, nothing else. Another story he isn't being told.

Derek sighs and looks away from the angel, rubs his hand over his chin and sighs again. Clearly, there's a ton of stuff he should have asked before allowing the angel in, but it's too late now. He isn't even sure he's capable of kicking the angel out at this point. And besides, having an angel owe him a favor- a huge favor, at this rate- ought to be worth it.

"How long will you be here?" he asks, and Castiel says nothing. Derek gives up on an answer for that after a minute. He gets to his feet- although where he's going to go, he has no idea; he's still in a dream- then pauses when something else occurs to him. "Those demons that attacked you- what's stopping them from doing it again?"

The wings flare out, spreading and lifting, the feathers fluffing up a bit. The angel is toneless when he answers but Derek can all but taste smug satisfaction all the same. "The demons will not be trying anything ever again. They are all dead."

Derek almost asks how that's possible, but Castiel tucks his legs back up and wraps his wings around himself, and the Hale house rips away from around Derek in a blinding rush as he jerks awake.

* * *

He checks that morning, as he's getting out of the shower, twisting around in an awkward angle and peering into the mirror. The wings are tucked in tight, pressed as close to each other and his skin as they can get. They have no weight, no physical presence, but they're inarguably _there_, and now that he knows they're there, he can almost feel them. He turns around so he's facing the mirror and puts his hands on the counter, dropping his head forward.

Angels. Demons. Angels and demons fighting. He's not blind to the world outside, he can see what's going on outside of California's sheltered valley. He doesn't know what's happening- or maybe he does, and he just doesn't want to put a name to it.

Angels. Well, shit.


End file.
